… on Lebanon/Iran democracy claims

If I was a blogger, I’d feel duty bound to comment on Elliot Abrams spurious claim in today’s NY Times that Iran’s election is a sham because the Supreme Leader makes the real decisions and unelected bodies can and do disqualify candidates, while Lebanon’s is supposedly the purest expression of democracy (which, we all know, Elliot would never have said if the U.S.-backed government had lost).

Of course this is just Elliott Abrams (literally) repeating the AIPAC talking points of the day, but still, it’s worth noting the following: Lebanon’s system gives everyone a vote, but not an equal one — in fact, a Christian vote is, in reality, worth about 1.5 Muslim votes, and among Muslim voters, a Shi’ite vote is worth about half of what a Sunni vote is. That’s because voting occurs according to sect, with seats allocated according to a formula based on the 1936 population census. Back then, Christians were supposedly 50% of the population, and half the seats in parliament are reserved for them, further allocated on the basis of the relative size of Maronites, Orthodox, Armenians etc. Muslims are also awarded 50% of the seats, with Shi’ite and Sunni awarded the same number of seats, and a small bloc for the Druze. The political contest in Lebanon occurs within those strictures — rival parties running for the Sunni vote, or the various sections of the Christian vote etc, but the allocation of seats according to sect is set in stone. The point, of course, is that the 1936 population statistics are no longer valid — Muslims are close to 70% of the entire population, and Shiites alone make up almost half of the total population. Hizballah and its allies easily claimed the majority of the popular vote in last weekend’s election; it was only the archaic allocation of seats that kept the government in power. And the takeaway message from the result was that Christian voters chose to vote against Michel Aoun, Hizballah’s Christian ally.

As for Abrams’ claims about Iran, I think the repudiation will be the scale of the turnout. After all, Iranians who share his “a pox on all their houses” outlook would do the logical thing and boycott the polls. The uncomfortable thing for all the neocons is that the election is making nonsense of the “regime-change” argument.

Both Iran and Lebanon are imperfect democracies (to put it charitably), but Abrams appears to want to hang on to the illusion that democracy in the Middle East will produce an endorsement of Bush-approved “moderates” while repudiating Iran-backed “radicals”…

This I’d point out, if I was a blogger… Yabadaba-dabadaba-dabadee…